In For A Penny
by DeceptiveSoftness
Summary: "If you're the Fullmetal Alchemist then I'm Justin Beiber!" - As a die-hard FMA fan Jessie is suprisingly resistant to believeing he has, in fact, been transported to Amestris.


**A/N:** This story, like so many of my others, was written because I was curious about something and wanted to see how it would play out. I don't think I've seen too many, if any, guys being transported into the FMA-verse so I thought it would be cool to have a dude for once being thrown into Amestris for many reasons. The first one, and perhaps most important one, is that he is _not _a fangirl! He will not meet Ed within the first five paragraphs, fall in love with him, become an alchemist, pass the state alchemy exam and live happily ever after.

I'm not going to get all angsty over this but, um, guys? What State Alchemists do you know that have happy and dandy lives? How many of them live happily ever after? They are literally human weapons who are obliged to do/say/kill what ever their bosses tell them to. Most of the ones we encounter within the series were present for the Ishbal war and the rest of them are either crazy or Edward. Not great examples of happy and carefeee lives. I mean, sure, by the end of the series things are usually sorted out and they run off into the sunset but for the most part they suffer from the start until the finish. Why would I put my poor OC through that?

Also why does the OC have to meet the Elrics/Mustangs Gang/Homunculus immediately? What are the chances that our bewildered little OC will just so happen to bump into Eddie and Co imediately after landing in Amestris, which is a big-ass country, and suddenly realises that they are, in fact, in another world. Instead of, you know, thinking that he was just some dude in decent cosplay? At what point does a normal human being see someone dressed like an anime character and immediately assume that they're in an alternate universe? I'm not, in any way, shape or form, saying that every other FMA-OC fic that does this is terrible. I've read loads of them and most are pretty good but I just wanted to try something different.

Also when I said above that he wouldn't fall in love with Edward after a few paragraphs, what I really meant was that he wouldn't be falling in love with Ed at all. This will most probably not end up a Yaoi fic. I've nothing against Yaoi, in fact I quite like it, but I just cannot bring myself to justify turning Edward gay for an Original Character of _my_ making. It would just end up as me projecting my personality into my character and that would warp both the story and the other Cannon Characters personalities as I tried to get them to conform to what I _think_ they should do.

So no Yaoi between the OC and anyone else... you know what, there will probably be no romance for the OC at all. I must be a terrible mommy to do this to my brain-child but I can't imagine any of the characters falling in love with my OC just because he did... what? He knows all about their past, present and future? Yeah, reaaal charming. Or perhaps because they've known him for all of a week and suddenly decide that he is their soul-mate and forget all other bonds they've formed with other characters prior to meeting mine. Somehow I don't see Riza telling Mustang to feck off because she's fallen in love with a fifteen year old know-it-all. Nor do I see Winry quitting her fixation on Ed, Sheska suddenly deciding that Boys are hotter than Books, Izumi leaving her wonderful and loving husband or Rose getting over her boyfriends death in a flash to cling onto my OC.

It wouldn't happen, if anything my character would be locked up, captured and tortured by the Homunculus or outright killed for knowing what he does. Can you imagine Father letting a little brat run free to blab to the world his Master Plan? Or can you see Bradley letting a civillian march up into Central Command and declare to the masses their Leaders un-dead status? Can you see Izumi not beating the crap out some kid who knows all about her life and tells her so within the first three seconds of meeting her? Can you see Hohenheim putting up with a moody teen who claims to know more about the Dwarf In The Flask than he does? Can you see Maes letting a crazy fortune-teller near his precious Elysia?

Of course not. It wouldn't happen. So here I am _attempting _to make a half-way realistic FMA-OC story. The chapters shall be short and drabble-y but they'll be out quick to make up for it. Again, I am not insulting any other FMA-OC fic.._ [not deliberately at least] _I have loved nearly every FMA story, OC or otherwise, that I've come across on this site because they give a brilliant insight into the authors mind and what they think should happen. They're fun to read and I do love them but this is just me attempting something different.

[Is it just me or is this the longest **A/N** in history?]

**Disclaimer: **Every night I pray for the rights to FMA and every morning I wake up dissapointed. Me No Ownie.

**Warning:** This chapter is rated T for [very] mild language. It should probably be K but I'm playing on the safe side of the sandbox for now.

Chapter One: Cry-Baby.

_By DeceptiveSoftness _**[Softie]**

Jessie let out an embarrasingly high pitched whimper and opened his eyes to blink blerily up at the rather murky afternoon sky. That was so weird. When had he decided that it would be a good idea to take a nap outside? And why had he decided to bodily throw himself of a freakishly tall building? Because, seriously, that was the only feasible way he could be in this much pain. His limbs felt like they'd been stretched out on a rack and his head felt like it had been whacked with a mallet. He didn't want to get too over dramatic or anything but he was almost certain that his _hair_ was hurting.

The wind picked up for a moment and Jessie tried to stop his teeth from chattering as the air whipped cruelly through the thin material of his PJs and chilled the breath in his already aching lungs. Seriously. What the fuck was he doing outside in this weather? It looked like it was going to rain and the grass he was lying on didn't seem too dry either. He frowned and then winced as the motion caused his head to spin. Okay, anything more strenuous than blinking was certainly out of the question which meant that he couldn't move and thus couldn't escape the rain that was no doubt on it's way.

He wondered if someone would find him, perhaps his mother, and bring him inside. It looked to be mid-afternoon so she should be home from work by now. He risked glancing to the side and saw that, no actually, he wasn't near his house and as such could not count on a courageous rescue by his doting mother. He frowned minutely and winced as the motion sent little sparks of pain through his skull. He couldn't see _anything_ that he recognised.

Last time he'd checked he'd been living in a decent enough part of Dublin, a bustling but none too grassy place. Despite Irelands reputation as the 'Emerald Isle' it's capital was a bit lacking in the foliage department. He lived in a small, terraced house in the city with his mother and two siblings. Sinéad was only four but Russel was eighteen and only lived in the house sometimes, like when he ran out of money or needed a place to crash in between jobs. The area in and around his house was filled with other houses, a few pubs and a new department store that played host to around a dozen, competing fast-food chains, a myrid of clothes stores and a rather forlorn looking Easons book shop that had been added in almost as an afterthought.

It certainly didn't have rolling, grassy hills that arched out far into the distance, nor did it have the tall, darkwood trees that shot up in little cliques and stood in isolated, groups. What it did have was buildings, lots of them, which this strange place seemed to be inconvieniantly lacking. Jessie furrowed his brow and then immediately unfurrowed it with a masculine "Owwie".

_'At least the weather's spot on' _he thought with a mournful sigh as a fat raindrop landed right on his nose, splashing raindrop fragments into his eyes. Immediately after that one drop came about a hundred more that fell from the sky with the accuracy and deadly speed of a hunters arrow, poised and ready to cause great pain and possible death onto whoever was on the receiving end of it's wrath. Okay, so perhaps he was being dramatic again but the rain _hu-urt!_ It really, really did. Each little drop was like a pin being pressed into his skin and he let out another , totally manly, whimper and attempted to curl up to escape the onslaught.

He supposed he could have been kidnapped. The last thing remembered was falling asleep in his bed, in his bedroom, in his house. Well, he didn't remember falling asleep, after all, who does? Who remembers the exact moment when their thoughts turn heavy and they sink into slumber. But the last thing he _did _remember was feeling incredibly sleepy, in his bed, in his bedroom, in his house. So it was safe to say he'd fallen asleep _there_ and woken up _here._

Wherever the hell _here_ was. The rain wasn't letting up and he was, by now, completely soaked to the bone, in absolute _agony_ and he also kind of needed to use the bathroom. The pitter-patter sound of the rain was doing terrible things to his bladder and he let out a low hiss of discomfort. Hissing was all very well and good, it was much better than whimpering or crying though he was aiming to get a manly I'm-In-Pain-But-To-Proud-To-Say-It grunt in sometime soon.

His mind drifted back to the kidnapped theory. It seemed like a good place to start because he obviously hadn't sleep crawled out into the backarse of beyond and, as such, _someone _must have put him here. Some jerkoffs looking for a ransom was out of the question and that put a bit of a damper onto the whole 'kidnapped' thing. His familly did okay but they weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination and, besides, ransoms were for rich kids who's mommies and daddies were floating their yachts on a their own private lake of dollar bills, not for your average middle-class family who's sole benfactor worked as a receptionist up at the local law firm.

It didn't make any sense to kidnap him for money. Though, that might not have been why he was taken. Jessie felt a chill run down his spine as hundreds of near-identical newspaper headlines passed through his mind.

**"**Teen found in ditch**."**

**"**Young girls murdered outside of school**."**

**"**Boys stabbed in playground**"**

**"**Youth tortured by caretaker**."**

These days there were all kinds of sickos out there who liked to kill people just for the sake of it. Would one of those really need a reason to take him from his home and murder him out in the country-side and then bury his body. Jessie eyes widened in panic as he clambered to his knees and tried to quell the rising tide of nausia that surged in his gut. Both from the pain of moving and the thought of being slaughtered out in the wild like and animal. His head whipped around deperately before he lept to his feet. Then he swayed gracelessly for a minute and his eyes rolled back his his head as he slumped backwards onto the ground, the muddy grass squelching beneath his weight.

[Break]

Khayal grumbled a little to himself as he trudged through the mud, churned up from the earlier downpour. It was very rare that they got rain this far East and even rarer that it caused such damage to the surrounding area. In fact, that's why he was here now, walking back from the nearest town where he'd been posting a letter to the Military requesting someone to help fix some of the mess. Youswell was a mining town but with the land turned tretcherous by the sudden rainstorm it was no longer safe enough to continue working. They had with great reluctancy - because who _really _wanted more Military bastards screwing up their town? That good-for-nothing Yoki was more than enough thank you very much - decided to send for help.

All of their letters that went through the town post-office mysteriously dissapeared, especially whenever they sent complaints to the Military, and it was no secret that Yoki and his goons were behind it, so he'd been sent to a neighbouring town to try get word out about their situation. Yoki was the worst, he just wanted to keep his bribes and illegitimate dealings out of the eyes of people who might actually do _something _to help them. When he was really little Khayal had thought that the people in the blue uniforms and the shiny black boots were _cool. _How could they not be? They were _soldiers_!

And then Lieutenant Yoki had shown up and crippled their economy with high taxes and low wages and Khayal learned that the Military were all a bunch of lousy fat-cats who lined their own wallets of the backs of good, honest folk. He wasn't walking on his own, his parents would never let him do that, he was with two other villagers Ami and John who were both slow pokes and as such were lagging behind. The blonde sighed and locked his hands behind his head as he let his eyes rove restlessly over the monotonous scenery.

It had only been a day since the freak weather storm and they'd spent most of that time going to and from the neighbouring village. Khayal felt a familiar stirring of pride in his chest as he thought about his dad trusted him with something this important. He hadn't been able to think about the stern, faintly worried but deterimined look on his dads face when he'd asked him to deliver the letter with out smiling. It was a good moment. The blonde smiled slowly before something caught it eye.

It looked like a bundle of rags rolled up near a bunch of trees but on closer inspection it was a person. Khayal yelled down to Ami and John before running towards the unconscious figure. It was a boy who seemed to be a little older then Khayal himself and he looked wreched. His skin was a ghastly white colour and was cold to touch and his lips were tinged blue at the edges. All he wore as a thin pair of cotton shorts and a loose black t-shirt that clung damply to his thin frame. The boy wasn't dead , though he certainly looked it, his chest rose and fell in a jerky rythm and his eyes moved restlessly beneath their lids.

"Holy crap! He musta gotten caught out in the storm, unlucky bugger!" John muttered as he knelt down beside the boy and, after a quick moments deliberation, hooked his arms under the youths knees and behind his head and lifted him up. The tall man swayed slightly with the added weight of the limp teen in his arms before he shrugged and began walking again. Khayal frowned and then ran to catch up with the older man, John had this annoying habit of thinking things instead of saying them out loud and assuming everyone knew what he meant.

"What're ya gonna do with him?" he asked curiously and John gave him a slow looked before rolling his eyes.

"I'm going to take him to Halling and see what he thinks we should do." John muttered and Ami, silent as ever, nodded in agreement. Again pride filled Khayals chest at the mention of his father. Halling was the unofficial leader in their struggle against the corrupt Lieutenant and was usually consulted before the Villagers did anything major. While taking in a stray homeless person wasn't exactly major it was still a big decision considering their own meager income. Could they afford to support another person? The blonde gave the unconscious boy a doubtful look before running back ahead to lead their party again. He'd be allowed to stay if he helped out, even Khayal helped out with what he could.

He remembered a few years ago when his dad had tried to take up Alchemy to help them get out of Yokis stranglehold. Halling was a many things, a good man, a great father, an honest friend but he was not a scientist. And Alchemy, as his dad had told him once, was a science, it had laws and rules that had to be followed. Like gravity and stuff. He'd said that the main rule was Equivalent Exchange, it meant that if you wanted one thing you had to give up something else of equal value, Khayal had always liked the sound of that. It meant, in theory, that for hard work you got paid. It figured that Yoki was too stupid to know even the most basic rule of Alchemy.

So in return for them helping _him _out the unconscious teen would help _them _out. Equivelent Exchange. Simple.

**A/N:** Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

Khayel is a lovely character and I really liked him in the series. He was a scrappy little thing that always stood up for what he believed in so I thought that I might as well add him in here as a bit of fan-worship. XD

Jessie is a bit of a cry-baby but to be honest, after consulting several of my guy friends for a one-of-a-kind insight into the make mind, most people would be a little whiny after waking up in stange place in their PJs, feeling both freezing cold and really sore and then getting rained on. It sucks, if I were him I would have probably cried.

Also, for those of you who might be confused Jessie was concussed and fell back unconscious after standing up too quickly, too soon.

Please **review** and let me know what you think. ^^

x


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